At first glance Twitter doesn’t seem to have much appeal for Costa Rica related projects because the local telephone monopoly lacks an official SMS gateway for Twitter. While there may not be any really good way for tweeting Costa Rican cell phones it is likely that a very important part of your target market is in the United States.
Expatriates in Costa Rica can participate on twitter thorough the web interface, integration with instant messaging or by using a 3G Smartphone offered by ICE. GSM phones are out in the cold, however the future is certain to offer some improvement with Twitter in Costa Rica.
The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
-Pew Internet & American Life Project
As twitter is the dominant social network built for the mobile device the implication is that the twitter network will continue to grow substantially.
Twitter through its API is also a popular sign-in option for comments, Twitter can “Follow” a Google Blogger, and most pages include a hook at the end of the article for sharing or adding a link via Twitter. This means that even people who do not use Twitter for SMS text messages can use it to speak their mind and leave comments on a web page.
The other really good reason to embrace Twitter is that it is easy to tie into your blog through a service like Twitterfeed, which publishes article summaries and automatically shortens page links so they are tweet friendly. While there are still many people who prefer to receive updates via Email Subscription there is an ever growing group that will use Twitter.
The bottom line is that Twitter and Opt-In Email are must haves for any blog or Internet based promotion, however if you don’t have a webpage, then Facebook is where you should start.
